Rainbow Irish Chain quilt

I finally finished this Rainbow Irish Chain quilt. I took a photo of Melissa Corry’s quilt at her trunk show at the retreat I attended in January 2015. I totally fell in love with it and decided I had to make one of my own. She described how she had made it all as a Leaders & Enders quilt, which means that after every set of chain stitching you do on a project, you send through something as L&E. You just keep piling up the small pieces, then start sending them through as bigger pieces until finally you are ready to piece together the blocks into rows. So I worked on it for 1 1/2 years while making other projects. It is made entirely of 2 1/2″ squares. Melissa used some longer strips on the low volume sections but I opted to just make it all squares. I discovered several months into the project that she had a tutorial on her website, but as I had been working from the photo, I just kept on going from the photo. I pieced the back with a rainbow strip down the middle and the square fabric is Essential Lights by Marsha McCloskey for Clothworks. The binding is a scrappy black binding of many different black prints. I cannot tell you how much in love I am with this quilt! It is going to be the new quilt on the guest room bed where I can see it across the hall every morning when I leave my room!